Alright, that sounds pretty weird to me. If you dont want to do anything in the pattern matrix, don’t click on it?
Anyway, I never had any problems with it, but you can just turn it off so there’s no problem here 
+1 for toggle shortcuts
That’ll do the trick.
Still need a Global Focus Matrix shortcut, like has been asked for since it was introduced and exists for every other area/pane within Renoise!
It’s not a question of “not wanting to do anything” in the pattern matrix, it’s a question of not wanting standard keyboard shortcuts (such as Ctrl-Up and Ctrl-Down to change between patterns) suddenly changing their effect because the most recent click was in the Pattern Matrix. If you click in the Instrument list, the keyboard shortcuts don’t suddenly change because the instrument list has not grabbed keyboard focus unless you middle-click on it.
This inconsistent focus behaviour was very annoying, and I’m glad to see it addressed. People will of course have different preferred workflows, but inconsistencies should be avoided if at all possible.
There already is a
“Focus Pattern Editor” shortcut in the matrix (Esc)
and
“Focus Pattern Matrix” shortcut in the pattern editor (Shift + Esc)
So they simply should be the same.
Still this does not really solve the problem, cause you first have to know of those shortcuts.
Maybe we can place a soft text or small button on the top left of the sequencer, which allows setting the focus with a single click and also makes it a bit more obvious that the pattern matrix is not focused.
I’ll change “Focus Pattern Editor” to Shift+Esc and there - I have a toggle shortcut 
But why is there not a GLOBAL one like there is for every other pane, like the DSPs, Mixer, Automation, Disk Op etc etc etc? How does this help if you’re using Matrix alongside Mixer?
Old way was better. Way better. 
I don’t like that option either, but i’m getting slowly used to use alt-left click right now (which also works on the pattern matrix).
couldn’t find who posted it before, but after making a couple of songs in the new 2.7b i strongly feel for the option to allow double-clicking in the pattern matrix to set focus there. its the shortest way (at least for a mouse-oriented user - for keyboard-oriented, i suppose the shortcut-keys work pretty well)
thinking of this, would it not be just as reasonable to expand the double-click-thing to setting focus in any part (except for the parts that get focus with a single click currently, like the pattern editor - not sure if there are others)?
Good point there. If we decide not to give “special treatment” to the pattern matrix, this could be viewed as inconsistent. IMO the pattern matrix should be working with the exact same focus mechanics as the rest of the interface. This way, we won’t be left with a mess, once the Renoise interface becomes more modular. But this is of course what this whole discussion is about?
My personal wish would be that the matrix adopted more shortcuts than what we’ve already got. So, for example you could select some matrix slots and hit the “transpose” shortcut, just like you would in the pattern editor. The pattern editor has a bunch of shortcuts : block/column/track/pattern “operations” - so I’m basically proposing that the matrix blocks get it’s own category where we add all the relevant operations like humanize, quantize, transpose etc., which would then work on the selected blocks
This “special treatment” will never end. We’ll have to add more and more pattern matrix shortcuts to the pattern matrix, and this never solves the real problem. The problem of the old behavior was that it focused the matrix when you didn’t wanted it to be focused. The new behavior’s problem is that it’s not focusing when you want it to.
Either way, the main confusion is that its not obvious THAT and where the focus is. And why there is such a focus at all. Probably we should put a bit more work into a better visualization of this “where the focus is”, to make this clear.
Summa summarum it seems that more people have more problems with the new behavior than with the old one. We got tons of bug reports for this already, which means it feels wrong, like a mistake, a malfunction for many. So I think we should revert the behavior to how it was.
But before we do so, I’d like to try one more thing - one last attempt before giving up:
- let middle click switch focus as well in the matrix (and do not mute slots when switching focus)
- slightly better visualization of the focus (maybe slowly pulsing focus corners will help - have to experiment a bit)
- new icon to set focus to the matrix with a single click, and acting like a big “help” button with a detailed tooltip, describing what’s happening
Not sure if this really solves the problem, but I think it’s worth a try.
I was wondering why can’t we just have single click focus between matrix and pattern editor? Where you left clicked last that view gets the focus.
(On second thought) reverting to left-click sounds reasonable enough. After all, the focus locking is not limited to the pattern editor, it’s everything that is contained in the middle panel (mixer, sample editor etc.) that has automatic focus when “Lock Keyboard Focus” is enabled.
I was thinking about a possible future Renoise interface where you could have a “standalone matrix”, not necessarily located in the middle panel. But this is perhaps something best dealt with, once we get to that point
This.
There is. This was annoying me too so I added it for 2.6. Unfortunately it gets added to the end of the list so you might not have spotted it.
It’s under Global > View > Focus/Show Pattern Matrix.
For what it’s worth, the focus stealing between matrix and editor made me switch to unlocked mode and I still prefer it. Only thing I think we should change is to make Esc always go into record mode, regardless of where your keyboard focus is. Unlocked really ain’t so bad. 
That is precisely the old method isn’t it?
Apologies then. Barely got a chance to touch 2.6, had requested it many times and never got a confirmation it was going to be added so though it may of been skipped. When I made that post I still had no hard drive and thus no Renoise to actually check. Thank you very much for doing it 
Me too
Under the old regime I was often led to believe that the pattern editor was in focus when it in fact was not. Most likely this was because it was possible (and indeed still is) to scroll up and down using the mouse wheel, and so on. When I’d press up or down on the keypad to insert a note I would suddenly find that the pattern matrix was in focus and I’d be jumping up and down through the song, cursing like a madman. This is the problem everybody had with the old way, I know. Would it be possible to have “where any kind of mouse action takes place is the focus”? Even if it is just scrolling?
In any case, the old way was better. So I vote to revert.
Of course, getting rid of that strange anomaly called “Lock Keyboard Focus” would completely eliminate all of these issues. 
well, i did have a small idea about selective focus, but am not sure whether it would overly complicate things. the idea is that you choose which GUI-items get locked for focus, and which aren’t. the original thread is here.